Hardcover, 367 pages
Release Date: March 5, 2013
Published by: Tor Teen
Series: The Arkwell Academy, #1
Source: Library
For fans of: Hex Hall, Various Creatures, Action, Sparkly Covers, Paranormal, YA
Sixteen-year-old Dusty Everhart breaks into houses late at night, but not because she’s a criminal. No, she’s a Nightmare.
Literally.
Being the only Nightmare at Arkwell Academy, a boarding school for magickind, and living in the shadow of her mother’s infamy, is hard enough. But when Dusty sneaks into Eli Booker’s house, things get a whole lot more complicated. He’s hot, which means sitting on his chest and invading his dreams couldn’t get much more embarrassing. But it does. Eli is dreaming of a murder.
Then Eli’s dream comes true.
Now Dusty has to follow the clues—both within Eli’s dreams and out of them—to stop the killer before more people turn up dead. And before the killer learns what she’s up to and marks her as the next target.
*MY THOUGHTS*
This book was one of my most anticipated reads of 2013. I was all hyped up to read it by other bloggers and then the cover was beautiful, I just KNEW that I would love it.But then when it was released I saw so many people either putting it on the back burner or giving it a low rating that I just waited along with everyone else. And now I see why everyone waited for it. Because I wasn’t that impressed either.
Ever get that feeling where you know you read something before but you know its just not this specific story? That’s how I felt with this story. It reminded me heavily of Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins. The good thing about that, I loved that story. The bad thing, the more I read this, I thought about re-reading Hex Hall and putting this one down. I mean it had its differences with Dusty being a nightmare and the whole dream thing, but it also had times where I was thinking “Dang this sounds like Sophie’s story.” And then there was the whole “love triangle.” I’m already not a fan of them, put that with the fact that I really didn’t fall for either one. I wasn’t particularly happy about that.
What I did like was the concept and the actual plot twist. It was not exactly what I was expecting, which was a nice turn after me not liking the rest of the story so much. I also liked the dream visiting. Although that was most of the story. But I will say I was expecting an epic battle scene at the end. It honestly wasn’t even luke warm smh Especially since it was always the same spells used throughout the entire book.
All in all, I guess I’m a little disappointed When I read the premise of this book and saw the amazing cover, I just knew that this was going to be a five star. Now I’m just surprised it got 2.
